Georgia 3 - Yeah, I have a lot of pictures. Oh, this one is about caves, though, and EVERYONE LOVES A CAVE, right?

When I left off earlier, we were on the road going into the Caucasian mountains, driving through the scorching heat and sun-burnt countryside.

As I mentioned, Georgia is spectacularly beautiful, and this mountainous region was particularly cool, because it was so full of history - every corner we turned, there was a fortress, or a church, or any other old structure..

..Like this, a huge fortress that suddenly appeared out of nowhere on a hillside.

Even without these structures too, though, the mountain region here is fantastic.

The mountains became more and more rugged and steep as we made our way up to our final destination, the cave city of Vardzia.

The city is a cave monastery, founded in 1185 and built into the mountain as protection against the mongols. At its height, the structure consisted of 6,000 (!!!) apartments over 13 stories with a church, a throne room, and complex irrigation, sanitation and ventilation systems for the thousands of people who lived in there.

It was also once the home of Georgia's warrior queen, Queen Tamar, one of the greatest monarchs in Georgian history, who even invaded all of Georgia's nearby muslim countries. (She also married a bunch of gay guys, and if I were you, I'd definitely read the wikipedia article about her, it's pretty cool).

It is, as you can see, a huge, enormous complex, but an earthquake in 1283 destroyed two thirds of the city, exposing the rest to daylight in the way you see here.

Before that, the only entrance to the caves was through a secret passageway in this monastery (where I am being filmed doing a stand-up routine about how the moose is the velociraptor or the north, and how I one day will make a theme park with prehistoric mooses, with DNA I extract from mosquitos trapped in amber.)..

..And through this little hidden door, located way down in the valley.

So the weird dude with no pants on the bus in D.C. was right, I am a caveman! Apparently.

Anyway, exploring these caves was fantastic, and it's stunning to think about the engineering challenges and the amount of work it must have taken to build a 6,000-unit apartment complex inside a freakin' mountain, using only the comparatively simple tools that tunnel-builders had almost a thousand years ago.

Haha, here is a picture of Georgie, moments before he accidentally hits some dude in the face.

..And here he is demonstrating one of the things in this country that has changed very little since the 12th century A.D.

Still, though, there was nothing wrong with the plumbing, and irrigation channels made sure fresh water flowed to the apartments and to terraced fields outside for food supply.

On the inside, some parts of the complex were lit up for tourists.. (This is me in Fraggle mode, by the way. Beware of the evil trash heap!)

..But most parts were not, for the true adventurers among us. Note how Georgie looks even more like Count Dracula than he usually does. If I were in a cave and someone looking like that lurked behind me, I would be fucking scared.

It kind of reminded me of the city in the Lord of the Rings movies, you know, the one that is built in stone.
If you buy the third LOTR DVD and fast forward to, like, the 15th hour, it's right there, I think, or maybe not, maybe I was dreaming. I definitely dozed off during most of that shitty fucking movie, but at least I got like 20 hours of sleep, which is a pretty rare event.

(Oh, by the way, speaking of movies, I saw the Simpsons movie the other day, and it's pretty funny! My favorite scene was definitely the whole "I was elected to lead, not to read!" Schwarzenegger schtick, it was pretty hilarious.)

Anyway, we climbed around, up and down impossibly steep stairs in hand-chiseled limestone.

..And it was pretty gnarly, I must say!


For I am truly, a caveman.

Alright, that's it for blogging for today. Oh, by the way, I've been to Long Beach on Long Island today, which was seriously super nice, especially since it was like 95 degrees out, and I'll definitely return there soon. I mean, although Lawn-Guylanders are weird as fuck, the beach was really beautiful, with clean water and amazing sand. And, it's just an hour away from my cozy home of/on Manhattan. So yeah, we should go again!

Alright, enough of this nonsense! Have a great rest of the weekend, everyone!